Ratings and Reviews by MathBrush

This game does a good job of recreating the feel of an old Russian folk tale, similar to the feel in Grimm's fairy tales.

You are tasked with finding the mythical Firebird. In your journey, you'll encounter frogs to kiss, princesses to court, series of 3 or 4 objects in a row with increasing magical properties, and so on.

The game was quite enchanting, although it comes from an earlier era of the internet that was somewhat less sensitive to some hot-topic issues today (like culture); however, part of this may just be tongue-in-cheek, poking fun at the same insensitivity in old myths.

A delightful game for fans of fairy tales.

Between the end of Infocom and the beginning of Inform, the biggest news was Unnkulia. This was the first game in the series; it is long, polished, and interesting.

It is also juvenile, with 'cheez' products that are toxic, some sex jokes, names like 'Kuulest' and 'Beegashell' mountains.

As the series progressed, it got better, until The Legend Lives! is actually quite a good game. But this first entry in the series is plagued by unfair puzzles and other features that made more sense when most of its players would be in a small community sharing tips with each other.

Mainly interesting as a historical curiosity. Another good game by the authors, I now remember, is the Horror of Rylvania.

In this game, you play as a young Inuit native (I believe; it never says, but you live on the ice and eat seal meat). You can summon beings from the Stars by placing runes on the ground that describe them, two runes at a time.

This game uses a parser/choice hybrid, by having a variety of nouns at the bottom which, as you click them, provide verbs to act on them with, usually two or three verbs at a time.

This system took me a bit to get used to at first, but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. The runes become an alphabet of sorts that, like the alphabet in Ingold's adaptation of Sorcery!, allows for a great deal of variety and difficulty in a parser hybrid.

The story was slow to start for me, but grew on me. I strongly recommend this game. It took me about 40 minutes to play.

In 2002, there was an author who became angry at the interactive fiction usenet community. They started trolling the forums, and used several fake accounts to pretend they were starting a company called Santoonie, and that they were working on an incredible game called Amissville for TADS.

The game was released, but was buggy. Someone later made this game, which Santoonie denied ownership of. It's just 4 rooms with one instant death and one way to get trapped in a dark room. It is really poorly done but funny at a few points.

This game was entered in IFCOMP in 2005. It's about getting stuck on the highway, and exploring an abandoned motel to get out.

This game has few major flaws; it has a few typos, the puzzles are original, the writing has a lot of clever notes.

But the game never takes off; the descriptions are fairly sparse, and so on.

This is a mid-length ifcomp game about time travel. You go back to your high school so that you can change your boring future.

The game is well-polished, but not very descriptive. You wander about, investigating different rooms. I had some issues with guessing commands.

It lasts about an hour.

This game seems to have been intended as a noke, but it's actually not bad. You are the papa in the poem, and the children, mamma, and stocking are there. And the poem's action just plays out one line at a time.

So, it's not that bad as interactivish poetry.

The bulk of this game consists of attending a party where you need to gather a dozen cupcakes of different kinds. Before this, there is a lengthy prelude involving your friend.

The writing is polished and creative, but somehow it never clicked for me. The game seemed kind of slow.

The puzzles are well-done, letting the PCs motivations lead instead of the player's.

Overall, a pleasant snack.

This twine game consists of several accounts from World War II, some real, some otherwise. Every page has a bunch of blue links. One link is a 'truth', and moves the story forward. One link is a 'lie', and sends you back to the very beginning of the game.

This is very obnoxious, making you have to restart the entire game at various times. Part of this is to reinforce the meaninglessness of propaganda. The text of this game is heavy, and dark.

In this game you are supposed to be taught how to program in Inform. But you have to work for it. After some hard puzzles, you get a device that prints out the inform 6 code of any item you look at.

This is really cool, but you have to do a lot to get to it, and the rest of the game is quite a jumble.

The author compares this game to Lists and Lists, and I think that that's a fair comparison.